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"The corporations prove they don't care about this country one iota, except for the consumer base it still gives them --- for now."

ya know, you're right. ya know what else? "free market" means that that is possible and permitted. you dont like the way things are going? do it yourself. you can learn to live without Coke and make your own computers. the problem is, America has gotten so lazy in what its needs are that we've forgotten how to take care of ourselves. you buy from the companies that produce overseas, so they keep MAKING things overseas.

also, yes, lots of production jobs are being lost to overseas, but what about marketing? consulting? sales, distribution, resourcing, law enforcenment, HEALTH (i plan on becoming a physical therapist, where one can mae in the upwards of 80k a year.) architecture, design, lumber, training, linguistics (which is GROWING due to jobs going overseas) and etc. when manfactering goes down, these jobs become MORE needed. people need to stop whining and get trained to do another job that is needed. it isnt as if anyonebut site managers get paid much for production anyway. we're a grown up company now. we can live a grown-up life.

Yes, however, the reason why we have a free market in this country is the same reason why access to our market is valuable. Private Property rights are protected, by government, and force of arms. Over 1 million of our sons and daughters have paid the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom that this market is built off of. Any US corporation owes this country its loyalty. Any US country claiming to be a multinational should be considered a foreign entity, and possible hostile.

China, for example, is not a free market, therefore free trade with them is impossible...unless unilateral.

architecture, design, lumber, training, linguistics (which is GROWING due to jobs going overseas) and etc. when manfactering goes down, these jobs become MORE needed.

Maintaining the capability of building actual, physical things is important in many ways. probably the most important is the well-established synergy between manufacturing and R&D. This is because when you're the one actually making something, you have an incentive to find new and better ways to build it, plus an incentive to improve upon what you're building, plus an incentive to gain the knowledge that allows you to understand that what you're building may eventually be replaced, hopefully with something better, that hopefully you'll have learned how to design and make. When somebody else is doing the building, they have those incentives, and you probably don't.

The other reason is that we end up placing our fates in the hands of outsiders. And there may come a time when, for reasons other than those found in the marketplace, those outsiders may be less inclined to want to supply them to us, no matter what tribute we may be willing to pay them. (We had a taste of this relatively recently, in fact, if you're old enough to remember the OPEC embargo of the 1970s.) That may be okay as long as what you're lacking is not vital to maintaining or defending the country. But if it is, you're probably going to be in a world of $hit.